For months the unions involved in the industrial action against Qantas used every tactic in the book to cause disruption and damage while trying to achieve their aims.

In May engineers’ union leader Steve Purvinas said it would be “wise for passengers to consider all their options when travelling". His Transport Workers Union colleague Mick Pieri said in September “we’re at the start of a war".

The TWU was very open about its tactics when in September the NSW secretary Wayne Forno said its members had “the power to make Qantas grind to a halt all over Australia".

These extreme threats brought no response from the Labor government. Only when Purvinas repeated his travel warning on October 11 did a Labor minister express concern about the threats.

Yet following Qantas’s inevitable reaction to this industrial campaign on the afternoon of October 29, a conga line of Labor ministers and members lined up to belt the management of Qantas, while at the same time suggesting the unions were doing nothing other than wearing red ties.

Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
called the Qantas actions “extreme",
Bill Shorten
said it was a “high-handed ambush" and that there was “no case for this radical overreaction", and caucus secretary
Nick Champion
suggested in Parliament the new Qantas symbol was the “angry leprechaun", presumably as an attempt to poke fun at the Irish background of the airline’s chief executive,
Alan Joyce
.

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This obvious bias shouldn’t be surprising, given Labor members are the political face of the trade union bosses in federal Parliament.

While the government constantly claims the so-called Fair Work Act got the balance right, we now see playing out across Australia a system introduced by Labor that guarantees unions a say over whatever happens in every workplace. The Prime Minister made an important point on the day Qantas announced its action when she said the Fair Work Act was operating as intended.

To think that this dispute is limited to Qantas is wrong. Some of Australia’s biggest employers, from Toyota to
BHP Billiton
, are facing rolling union campaigns and strikes. On top of this, recent employer surveys in the struggling manufacturing industry identify the Fair Work Act, with more than 60 sections that increase union power, as responsible for introducing barriers to productivity growth and labour flexibility.

Labor’s response to criticism of its union-friendly laws has been to blame employers for not being smart enough and accuse others of wanting to return to Work Choices.

Wrong. As former member of the Productivity Commission
Judith Sloan
observed recently, the real impediments to greater workplace efficiency – and therefore productivity growth – have nothing to do with wages but everything to do with restrictions on the way workplaces can be managed. In the real world, real wages can only rise in line with productivity.

The biggest threat to productivity is the dead hand of the Fair Work Act, which is replete with examples of rules entrenching a union veto over changes in the workplace and throwing hurdles in the way of productivity. These include the so-called good faith bargaining system, the flawed award flexibility arrangements, restrictions on the engagement of contractors, the ability of unions to intervene even where agreements are supported by the majority of employees, and the general protection provisions which are becoming a lawyers’ picnic.

The Fair Work Act has given unions a veto over what happens in any workplace and between any employer and employee, whether they have members there or not.

Australians demand the right to make their own decisions. Working smarter, not harder, and improving productivity means giving employers and employees the freedom to choose.

Labor’s workplace wind-back is all about union power. Witness the decision this past week to proceed with plans to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the body that has helped prevent industrial war on our building sites for the best part of the last decade.

Sadly, while Labor’s “fair" laws operate, we will see many more industrial wars.